Capcom’s classic Mega Man series provides unlikely inspiration for this vertical shoot ’em up. After being presented with a brief introduction to a rogue’s gallery of animalistic villains, including a mole known as Toby Topside, you’re shown a familiar stage select screen that uses character portraits. From here, you can tackle stages in any order, with each boss adding a new drone weapon to your roster. Unlike Mega Man, though, these drones aren’t key to quickly defeating certain bosses – which is something of a missed opportunity.
Nevertheless, the ability to choose the order of stages and select up to three drones – which include a laser beam, homing missiles, and a backwards shot – makes it clear that this isn’t your typical space shooter. Diversifying itself further, this is a full-screen affair with no smart bombs, putting the focus instead on finding a perfect match of drones. Upon unlocking the homing missiles, they’re likely to become a permanent fixture, as they can potentially wipe out an entire wave of enemies. Still, this does leave two spare slots to dabble with. To activate all three drones at once, you must also be fully powered up, requiring you to navigate the whole screen and its numerous enemies and hazards, such as pesky skull-faced bouncing bombs.
The story is one of revenge, seeing space pilot Quad go up against seven generals after being falsely pronounced dead. Just three continues are provided to beat all eight stages and their bosses, with the final stage only unlocking when the rest are complete. You can, however, resume progress with zero continues, in the hope of achieving a high score to add at least one to the pile. Lessening the difficulty greatly is the frequency of health top-ups. Quad can withstand four hits, and every ten seconds or so a health token will appear on screen – making it very easy to get back up to full health, even just before a boss fight.
Some shooters in the £4.99 price range look a little cheap, but this isn’t one of them. Visually, it uses a pleasing mix of 2D sprites and low-poly 3D models, along with bold colour choices such as a line of purple explosions. The music is always upbeat, akin to that found in a grand RPG, while before each stage there are a few paragraphs of dialogue to set the scene. The bosses, meanwhile, are a little cliché, such as a battle against a robotic octopus and an underground drilling machine, but they are appropriately challenging, with a few different waves to learn. A bullet hell shooter this may be, but it’s never unfair, with a safe zone always available.
It took me two hours to finally emerge victorious, finding the final stage significantly tougher than the rest – which didn’t come as much of a surprise. The potential was there for that playtime to be far shorter, as I ran into a glitch on Xbox Series where the continue and exit-to-menu options merged together, forcing me to restart each time with no credits, ergo beat each stage with a single life. This wasn’t too tricky overall – in fact, it was quite enjoyable – further enforcing that Blast ‘N Bounty represents a fair challenge.
While the lack of online leaderboards is disappointing, as is the lack of extras like a time attack mode, Blast ‘N Bounty still manages to grip and entertain throughout its short playtime. It’s also a tad more polished than you may expect. So, although the £4.99 price tag is a clear indicator of its brevity, it isn’t one of its general qualities. Chalk this one up as being formulaic yet fun, largely thanks to its Star Fox-esque cast of squabbling space critters.
No CheckPoint’s Blast ‘N Bounty is out 22nd July on all formats. Published by eastasiasoft.